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@AskingAmy Having lived in Colorado where I first heard both, I think we can pronounce it both ways and be correct.… twitter.com/i/web/status/9…<a href="http://www.twitter.com/Javarain"><img src="http://twitter-badges.s3.amazonaws.com/twitter-b.png" alt="Follow Javarain on Twitter"/></a> 3 days ago

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Sure, the young protesters were there to provoke a response, but they were non-violent. They were present in Israel to call attention to the violence and injustice done towards Palestinians, something seldom seen in the Western press, and not deemed important by American Christians.

That there are real security concerns in Israel is a fact. The IDF is trained to suspect all Palestinians of the most egregious crimes and behaviors. They do not differentiate. Imagine an entire nation labeled “Terrorist Killers”! This includes small children, pregnant women, old women and hard working farmers who are Muslim and Christian.

That there is an over diligence and over reaction often to the point of bullying on the part of the IDF and the Government is a well documented fact.

Let’s give the Lt. Col. who over reacted, the benefit of the doubt: PTSD, Family troubles, Stress, Depression, Economic problems may have entered in. But, consider what happens in similar situations to a lone Palestinian farmer who doesn’t have a camera following him, when he argues with a soldier about the confiscation of his land?

Read what blogger Emily L. Hauser, who left Israel because of their policies toward the Palestinians, has to say.

How many of us white parents have instructed our young sons about the company they keep? How about driving too fast, keeping their grades up, and studying before watching TV or playing games? Have you warned your son lately about the dangers of running with anything in his hand or running at all in public?

Trayvon Martin Protest - Sanford (werthmedia)

I was very moved this morning, when I heard Jonathan Capehart on “Morning Joe” talking about the warnings he received as a young, black male close to Trayvon Martin’s age and earlier…these exact warnings, and others.

What an unimaginably perverse world these young African-American men, children really, live in, when 17 is as innocent as carrying Skittles and Iced Tea and rushing to get home for the NBA playoffs and as menacing as being pursued and killed by a “vigilant citizen”.

Our own adopted son, who is brown and a Pacific Islander, was well aware of the need to keep a low profile when he was driving, especially when he wore a baseball cap and drove his rusted out red(ish) car. “Mom, cops always pull over the black kid with the red car and baseball cap, even if they’re not doing anything.” (nor even Black…but simply “shaded” a beautiful brown).

He has been strong armed and attempts made, by clientele, to bar him from some “hangouts” in Ithaca, NY. Called “Black”, and most recently “Mexican”, the wonderful ability he has to identify with most of the rest of the world culturally, is seen as a flaw and a threat in white Western nations.

I marvel that we, his father and mother, who are white, can travel so many places in the Middle East and be welcomed into homes of strangers, yet our son has never felt welcomed in his adopted country.

What adds insult to injury in the Trayvon Martin case, is that the killer, though known, has not yet been arrested, but Trayvon’s body was held for three days while drug testing was done.

Some of you can’t imagine this happening to your sons, but I can, and so can thousands of other mom’s in the Western world: Mom’s of foreign, dark children; Mom’s of African-American kids; Mom’s of Muslim boys…the list goes on.

We make laws to prevent terror, but we remain terrified and suspicious of people unlike ourselves. I’ve learned this is true of non-whites as well. We truly cannot adequately step into another person’s shoes without intentionally changing course, and changing course feels like a betrayal to “our own”.

Some Americans continue looking the other way, telling me that racism is a thing of the past here.

Well, it’s not, nor will it be, until extraordinary understanding and compassion have replaced fear and loathing in our hearts.

So many headlines about the rioting and killing in Homs, Syria. Yet, not a “peep” from me here on a blog where I often write about Muslim issues. Why?

President Bashar al-Assad

The answer is a simple one. I have conflicting information about the situation in Syria and can’t verify any of it. This is what I know.

Of course, we’ve all heard these terrible reports coming out of Syria, from Al-Jazeera, Al-Arabia, and Western News sources. Western journalists have been killed, claims have been made against President Assad‘s regime blaming him for thousands of deaths.

Yet, a Muslim friend tells me her sources in Syria are claiming it is a “grand conspiracy” to try to bring Assad down. Christians in Syria are still positive towards Assad because of the freedom his regime has afforded them.

President Assad, a mild-mannered Ophthalmologist claims innocence and ignorance of all that is going on in his country. So what is the truth? Is he lying, or so incompetent that he doesn’t know what his military is doing? Who is really killing all these people?

It’s a question that Western Journalists aren’t able to answer very accurately at this point because few if any are on the ground in Homs. The Red Cross has been trying to enter as well.

I want to introduce you to my friend, Joanna, who writes an intelligent and insightful blog about things that matter in our world. Her most recent post titled, “Bearing Our Own Energy Burden” provoked a strong reaction in me.
I have been looking into the truth about Hydro-Fracking and the impact it will have on us here in Dryden, NY. A lingering question in my mind has been, “Why can’t they figure out a better way?”. I’m ashamed to say, Joanna’s viewpoint never occurred to me, nor have I heard anyone in our area mention it. There seemed to be only two sides to this debate on extracting energy from underneath our soil: For= Because we need it and it’s not really so harmful, or Against= It is harmful and we don’t want to suffer the consequences.Sadly, I had never thought of it as a Human Rights issue.

Please click on the LINK above to continue reading and let us (Joanna or me) know what do you think of Joanna’s viewpoint.

The Keystone XL pipeline – once relatively unknown to everyone but energy execs and protestors – has become a major US election issue and the source of much controversy lately.

The proposed pipeline would carry oil 2,000 miles from Canada’s tar sands through the US and down to Texas. Environmental activists have been fighting the project aggressively. They claim it would threaten indigenous populations, run the risk of major spills, speed up climate change, and waste vast amounts of water.

They’re probably right, but lately I’ve been frustrated by the rhetoric.

I have seen firsthand the absolutely devastating impact of unregulated, unchecked energy production. Fly ash pollution, oil spills, and poisoned well-water are real, and most of the time the companies responsible never pay appropriate damages. Even the best injury attorneys have to invest millions just to take the offending corporations to court. That’s a big gamble on behalf of…